Jerusalem Moonlight

An American Zen Teacher Walks the Path of his Ancestors

by Norman Fischer
Clear Glass Press, 1995 $16

Reviewed by Andrew Rader

Initially, upon discovering this book I presumed it was simply another entry into the new genre of the Jewish-Buddhist gestalt. In fact, there is little direct reference to the recent Jewish-Buddhist dialogue. The format is a series of vignettes, not in any chronological or spatial order, bouncing back and forth between Marin, Japan and Israel. Disconcerting at first, I began to settle into the lack of flow in time and space and enjoy each story as it came.

An insightful observer --he should be, after over 20 years as a Zen priest-- Norman gives the reader an intimate look into his experiences while traveling with his father and brother in Israel. His encounters with Israeli relatives and their friends seem so familiar. Perhaps that is why this book is so intriguing: it's about us.

It is clear that he is quite at ease with his identity. The fact that he is Jewish and that he is a Zen priest is for him in no way a contradiction. He reveals some, but not many, of his own experiences being a Zen priest -- who also happens to be a Jew. This, for me, is perhaps the only disappointment in the book, not enough from this perspective-- yet the few stories he tells are jewels.

One Sunday morning at Green Gulch, Ruth, a Jewish woman in her seventies, asked him to comment on the situation involving the Catholic convent at Auschwitz. She explained how the nuns erected a cross that was clearly visible from the camp. Jews from around the world reacted vociferously at the nuns' insensitivity. The local Bishop intervened and made them take it down, but the convent remained and the nuns were instructed to pray for the souls of the Jews who died in the camps. They could not understand why the Jews had a problem with this. Were the Jews being narrow-minded? Were the CAtholics being stubborn? Ruth wanted to get the opinion of someone who was neither Christian nor Jewish. Norman relates:

I was sitting up on the couch in meditation posture, wearing my robes, with my head shaved, as it usually is. "What makes you think I am not Christian nor Jewish?" I said to her.

"Well," Ruth said, "I mean I just wanted to ask someone who isn't emotionally involved."

"Why do you think I'm not emotionally involved?" I asked her.

He then goes on to describe another interaction:

"Then someone asked about the Japanese forms in our meditation hall. How come there is all this bowing and all these robes and incense? Does it make sense to have these Japanese things when none of us are Japanese?"

I put my hands together to show her the traditional gesture the Japanese call gasho. "Is this Japanese or not?" I said. Actually when I do it I don't know what it is. "I have been doing this gesture and wearing these robes for almost twenty years, practically my entire adult life," I said. "It doesn't seem Japanese or unusual to me. Besides, the Japanese got it from the Chinese and the Chinese got it from the Indians, and I don't know where the Indians got it from. When I put these robes on and do gasho it just feels pretty ordinary. I am just a regular Jewish guy from a little town in Pennsylvania doing what I have done almost my whole adult life."

The stories are as they are. Some are ha ha funny, some are simply aahhh. He uses real names and real people and he has a note in the preface to those people that he mentions not to take any offense at what he has revealed because he in no way means to upset anyone.

This realness adds a little zest especially when he talks about locals. Rabbi David White, formerly of Kol Shofar in Tiburon and currently at the Napa Jewish Congregation and Rabbi Alan Lew of Beth Shalom in San Francisco figure prominently. For local readers it's as if we are eavesdropping on a conversation that is occurring at the next table at Greens. A worthwhile read. Buy it at Green Gulch and you just might bump into Norman himself.

— from our December 1995 Newsletter

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